~ Don't Touch the Pipebombs

Monthly Archives: March 2014

Well, I suppose I’m going to post about Raw, regardless of how tired I am. I can’t really think right now, so hopefully this turns out ok.

Okay, first, I have a contest for anyone who reads this. I have a jar filled with every single C.M. Punk chant that occurred last night on Raw, and I want you to guess how many chants the jar contains. Closest to the correct number wins a hypothetical high five. (Hint: They chanted it all night.)

Yes, Paul Heyman comes out to C.M. Punk’s music. Everyone naturally went batshit crazy when they heard Cult of Personality. I wonder how many were smart enough to realize, like I was, that if Punk was going to show, it would certainly be the end of the show, and not the beginning. It was obvious it was going to be someone trolling at the beginning. (That said, actually acknowledging Punk’s existence for the first time in a month promises that C.M. Punk is actually there, and he wasn’t. So, someone fucked up.)

That said, if anyone was going to troll the audience, Paul Heyman was the perfect person to do it. Bad News Barrett could’ve done it, but he’d never be able to work in Chicago again. It had to be someone who’s actually close to Punk that can do it. And his promo was really good – he talked about Punk, but then brought it back to his current program of Lesnar vs. Taker.

Does anyone care about Lesnar vs. Taker? I don’t. Seen it.

Anyways, Lesnar comes out, and eventually Mark Henry comes to attack him for seemingly no reason, but ends up getting F-5’ed through the announce table.

Side note: When Lesnar took apart the announce table, he threw the monitors clear over the ring, and one of them bounced off the ground and flew into the fans sitting by the ramp. I guess someone is getting a free ticket to Payback.

Side Note: You can see the blonde bimbo sitting in front of me in this video. She’s a fucking tard. She didn’t even sit down properly the entire fucking night. She sat on the top of the chair without pushing the seat down, so her fucking retarded hairdo was in my face the entire night as she drank and cheered for all the big muscle-y guys she wanted to get fucked by like the slutty whore that she clearly is. Someone shoot her, please. Every time she got up, I tried to get an I can see chant going, and when she sat down I chanted I can’t see or No!

On another note, while I was chanting C.M. Punk much like everyone else, I was only doing it during appropriate times, whereas the crowd did it during most of the show, which pissed me off. I was screaming at people to shut up and be respectful of those that deserved it. There are, in fact, other people in the company besides Punk. Shield vs. Wyatts is one example, the Usos are another, and so on.

You can also notice that they set the announce table back up which was freaking weird, because that never happens. Clearly people needed it in this match.

The match was awesome, obviously. Not as good as their first match, of course, but it was still freaking awesome. Rollins tried to land on his feet from a Super German Suplex but he fell this time – sadness. Regardless, the important thing is that Rollins eventually left Ambrose and Reigns to fend for themselves, which made them lose.

Side Note: At some point, some people started throwing a beach ball around the crowd, which was amusing. Still nothing quite as ridiculous crowd-member-wise, though, as the one chick at the first Smackdown I ever went to in December 2001 that kept getting up during commercial breaks and flashing people. (Don’t they kick people out?) You know what, that’s probably the same chick that was sitting in front of me last night.

It was fun, at least when Emma and Summer Rae were wrestling. I mean, Santino’s fucking useless as always and it’s stupid that Emma’s stuck with this tard.

Next was Sheamus vs. Christian in a decent match the crowd gave zero shits about. This was when the crowd started getting bad, and it was annoying me because the match was actually not bad, outside of its predictability.

Next, the Bella Twins for some reason had a match against Alicia Fox and Aksana. No one gave a shit. The only thing noteworthy was the people around me started a “Nikki’s Boob Job” chant. Nikki won with her finisher, strangely named the “Nikki Rack Attack” (Which is code for Nikki named her finisher after her boob job.)

Next Daniel Bryan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haJy_DgtpGU) came out and cut a promo, and used the words “Hijack Raw” which immediately made that whole Twitter thing uncool because WWE stole it and used it. (Botch) He sits in the ring and waited for either Batista or the Authority to show up, and the Authority did. I can’t really tell you what the Authority had to say because they got booed out of the building so badly you couldn’t hear them for the entirety of the segment. Fans expecting C.M. Punk were let down, why I don’t know, because it wasn’t the end of the show.

At some point they showed the Wrigley Field sign that read “Go Blackhawks” which caused me to yell at anyone who started chanting “Let’s Go Blackhawks” and calling them bandwagoners because any real hockey fan knows it’s “Let’s Go Hawks.”

Also they aired a preview for the Scooby Doo WWE movie they’re doing and a Scooby Doo chant started.

Next was Alberto Del Rio vs. Dolph Ziggler (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZLghIS_YuA), who came out with random guest host Aaron Paul, who was on everyone without a brain’s favorite show Breaking Bad. I instead chanted David Bolland at him because he looks like David Bolland, and he wishes he had half as much talent. I also chanted Breaking Bad sucks because it does. Warehouse 13 > all. If you want a guest host I’ll care about, get Scags.

That said, this was probably the best use of a guest host they’ve had, because everyone wanted Ziggler because everyone loves Ziggler. Even those who hate Ziggler love Ziggler, they just are too dumb to realize it. And Dolph won!

(It was clear that everyone the internet liked was going to win tonight.)

Paul Bearer was announced as being put into the Hall of Fame this year.

Big E was going to have a match with Jack Swagger but Cesaro hit him with a Neutralizer immediately so Swagger got DQ’ed. Cesaro and Swagger shove each other and Cesaro goes to swing Swagger but Colter stops him and they hug it out.

John Cena shows up to his usual amounts of boos from Chicago, outside of from the kids next to me and the slutty whore in front of me. He panders to the crowd like the douche that he is, gets a Yes chant when he says he won’t be in a match from the fake injury he has. He panders about Punk, and then he pulls some of the bullshit not passing the torch promos he’s been doing lately, and then Bray Wyatt appeared on the screen and cut a promo I wish I could’ve heard, but the crowd was being douchebags and chanting for Punk and listening to the promo like they should’ve been.

Before the main event, Alexander Rusev showed up and posed to no reaction.

The main event was Batista vs. Daniel Bryan which started at 10:01, and didn’t last much longer than eight minutes because Batista is in such terrible shape that he’s tired by the time he gets to the ring. Orton attacks Bryan midway through, sometime after the Authority shows up. Triple H gets in the ring and starts saying he’s sick of Bryan’s fantasy something and gets kicked in the head, leading to Batista coming in and powerbombing Bryan before Triple H Pedigrees him to end the show, while fans chant for Punk and Punk doesn’t come.

The boring post-Raw stuff saw Big Show, Cena, and Bryan hit their finishers on Orton, but no one cared because Punk didn’t show.

The show was probably the best Raw I’ve gone to that I can remember, just no one cares because Punk didn’t show.

The ironic note is that every fan that said they were going to riot if Punk didn’t show instead immediately crowded the box office to buy tickets for Payback in June, as is tradition.

In it, I commented on the whole situation, obviously. And while it’s felt more and more true as time has gone on, I also commented on the “ideal situation” at the end of the post – the one being where it’s all a work. And we’re reaching the final Raw where, after it, that window will completely close and we will know for sure. You can argue that that window should’ve closed a long time ago if you like, but if this was a work, Punk wouldn’t return until Chicago no matter what. I’m going to revisit that post now.

Much like I did in the previous post, I’m probably just overanalyzing things. I do that a lot. And I’m sure I’m giving WWE creative way too much credit. In fact, if this ends up being correct, I’d almost have to say Punk thought of this himself. So, just take what I’m saying for what it’s worth – if I’m wrong, well, what else did you lose but a few minutes of your time.

First, I want to reiterate the Ideal Situation from the original post, but that stuff still stands:

WWE knows how over Daniel Bryan is. It can’t be ignored. And while I’m sure WWE is indeed stupid enough to just ignore it and do whatever they so please, what if everything that’s happening is an elaborate ruse?

What if WWE planned for all of the fans to be disappointed with Batista winning the Rumble? What if everything, like a ridiculously dumb rumored WM30 card, Mick Foley’s comments on Twitter following the show, and C.M. Punk quitting, is all something that’s planned by WWE, so when it comes closer to WM30, EVERYTHING changes.

It’s fair to say Daniel Bryan’s not going to win the title at Elimination Chamber, regardless if this is real or fake. It’d make less sense for Bryan to win the title at Elimination Chamber than it would be for him to not win the Rumble.

They can easily make Punk’s leaving into a storyline, one that goes on for several weeks. If he’s going to face Triple H at WM, he doesn’t really need to be around until March to set it up (Does he really need to waste time and face Kane?), and he can just come back when Triple H is running him down on Raw (on March 3rd in Chicago) and drop a pipebomb and there we are. (Meanwhile Bryan is inserted into the title match and goes on to win.)

All of this would start on March 3rd in Chicago, with Punk’s surprise return at the end of the show. If you think the crowd isn’t going to be chanting for Punk the entire night, you’re dead wrong.

So, before I go into why I believe this is possible, I’m going to throw out the hole in my theory which I just realized. He had a meeting with Vince before leaving – if he was going to do this, it would make a bit more sense if he was having a meeting with Triple H. It doesn’t completely rule it out, but hey, I’m calling this the unlikely scenario anyway.

Here’s why I think it’s not out of the question:

1) WWE only removed him from live events and shows, which they’d have to do to make it seem legit. WWE has not reported that he is gone as of yet. They unfollowed him on Twitter, but that’s really irrelevant.

2) John Cena tweeted that we’re in for a “helluva” ride leading to this year’s WM. Also, someone within the company posted on facebook that “WM is going to be very good this year, if what he’s told is true. I won’t get into detail to not spoil it.” He said this after the Rumble. If that’s all true, then clearly they know something we don’t – the rumored WM card is not a “helluva” ride, nor is it really good, so either they’re both freaking stupid or we’re in for a lot of surprises.

3) I heard that WWE wanted to do a “Summer of Punk” kind of storyline this year, whether it was going into WM30 or after, I don’t remember, but this could be it.

4) Is WWE really dumb enough to not give fans what they want at WM30? It’s the 30th anniversary, and they like to mimic things from ten years in the past, so Bryan winning would be mimicking Benoit. They can’t just give that BS rumored card for what should be the biggest WM yet, can they? With the reaction the Rumble got, they must know that if the ending of WM is anything that isn’t Daniel Bryan winning the title, the crowd’s going to shit all over it just like the Rumble – only a thousand times worse.

So, I’ll leave you with the following video, in hopes that everything’s an elaborate setup and that we’re all being played. I doubt it, of course, but until March 3rd comes and passes without C.M. Punk showing up at the end of it – and I’m going to go in expecting it, chanting for him with the rest of the crowd, and so on (and getting a refund if it doesn’t happen because he was advertised for the show when I bought the ticket!).

But until then, remember, the greatest thing the devil ever did was make everyone believe he didn’t exist:

(Ironic note: I’m a member of a Shield fan page on facebook, and admin is friends with an indie wrestler who “confirmed” that Punk’s leaving is real because he works in some kind of developmental system that Ricky Steamboat (allegedly) works in, and Steamboat is mentioned in that promo.)

With all of the previous post out of the way, I have more things I want to comment on now.

1) I know the rumor is C.M. Punk has a good amount of money saved up, at least that’s what the internet says, but would you really turn down a WM paycheck?

2) All of it still happened at a weird time. Why did it break a night after Raw, and not the same night? When Rock walked out the night after WM, it was all over dirtsheets immediately. It doesn’t normally take that long for a story like that to break.

3) Two Sundays in a row following Punk leaving, an “anonymous WWE top star” emailed dirtsheets and their words were printed. Since when do top WWE stars email dirtsheets?? Granted, those two emails were anti-internet fans and pro-status quo, but it can all be part of it.

4) WWE Creative was told that Punk left mainly due to injuries. He’s had a month – easily enough time to get over some fatigue. Also, for what it’s worth, I’ve thought the entire time he wanted the month off so he could watch Olympic hockey, and whatever other UFC related shows he went to.

5) There’s been (false) reports of WWE kicking people out for chanting CM Punk. Who started these rumors? Dumb fans, or false twitter accounts that could easily be someone within the company posing as fans? This kind of thing is standard Summer of Punk ’11 kind of stuff in my book. (In fact, the entire situation of not giving the fans what they clearly want is that kind of stuff.)

6) WWE has removed C.M. Punk from video packages and is pretending like he doesn’t exist – they have not mentioned him once, outside of trolling fans during commercial breaks – but they continue to release new C.M. Punk action figures and hats.

7) Vince McMahon said to shareholders that “C.M. Punk is on sabbatical.” The term sabbatical heavily implies that Punk will return.

I know it’s hard to believe that WWE could pull this kind of thing off. But, they did pull the Chris Jericho Royal Rumble 2013 surprise return off, so it’s not unprecedented. It’s certainly possible for this to be done – we just don’t give WWE credit because so many times it hasn’t worked. But outside of feeding dirt sheets only the information they want them to to know – all C.M. Punk is gone and why and he’s not talking to anyone and that kind of stuff – what else do they really need to pull this kind of thing off? They could do that easily, if everyone within the company just acts as if its real around anyone who would put report this kind of thing to dirtsheets, and only have Vince and Punk, who would (if it’s a work) actually still be contacting each other, and only each other, to work out anything that they need to work out. For what it’s worth, someone in L.A. that Punk knows said he was going to see Punk the day of Raw in L.A. because Punk was working, and it was after Punk left.

8) Batista vs. Randy Orton as the main event clearly will not work with the fans reacting the way they are. In fact, Batista just turned heel on Smackdown. That’s going to make it heel vs. heel in the main event of WM30. DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE????? I mean, you can argue that Orton could turn face, but that’s not going to work either. THIS MATCH REQUIRES A FACE. You could argue that the title match won’t main event, but considering I’m not even sure Bryan would even beat HHH, why would that close if Bryan could potentially lose?

I know it’s easy to argue that my theory is complete bullshit with the way programming is going right now. In fact, before I point out what exactly brought this post about, I was about ready to shut that window after Raw on Monday, after it seemed like all of those matches that were on the dirtsheets seemed to be setup. The only reason that doesn’t completely sway me is that if WWE wants to pull this off, they have to appear to completely be going in the direction the dirtsheets are reporting. In actuality, the only thing that would need to be “Set in stone” would be Bryan/HHH, which, while the challenge is indeed there, the match is not yet set in stone. All that needs to happen is for Bryan and HHH to be having a confrontation at the end of Raw this Monday, and the fact that HHH is NOT giving the fans what they want is a huge point in the promo – and, well, that’s more Summer of Punk stuff for you right there. Punk would come out and say that HHH is scared or something, and what fans want is not Bryan/HHH, but instead they want Bryan in the title match.

9) Again, Mick Foley’s comments after the Rumble is something I want to bring up. Also, I’d point out the fact that Punk has been brought up on both Stone Cold’s and now Jim Ross’s podcasts. I know WWE doesn’t pay them to do anything on these shows, but you’d think that, since all of this is very internet based, that they could be in on it. (Hey, I’m calling this post Conspiracy Theory, right?)

10) Dolph Ziggler and The Miz have both had some promos recently about how fedup with things they are. On the other hand, John Cena has suddenly started using doing promos about not being ready to pass the torch quite yet. That’s a random, dramatic change from his usual corny BS promos if I’ve ever seen one. Why now? What sparked it?

And finally, I’m going to bring up the one thing that, after Raw Monday, brought me to thinking there was still a little hope that this theory is correct. Take a look at the following Twitter account:

This account was created in the past couple of days. It’s purpose is to get the crowd for Raw on Monday organized to try an change things – to hijack the show – to chant C.M. Punk and to turn our backs on Triple H and Batista.

What if this was, in fact, C.M. Punk behind this? Obviously the creator of the account is faceless. It could be anyone. But I’ve been thinking about it, and while it certainly could just be fans trying to create change, I’m not so sure. Here’s why:

1) Look at the way the posts are written. Outside of some that are catchphrases, a lot of the phrasing seems more educated than something your typical pissed off wrestling fan would use. It seems like a revolution leader. (*Cough*C.M. Punk*Cough*) Just go through its tweet list and read, you’ll see what I mean.

2) This twitter account was created three days ago or so. It’s purpose is to get the CHICAGO RAW CROWD to revolt. Firstly, the Chicago crowd doesn’t need a twitter account for them to chant C.M. Punk for three hours. It was going to happen regardless. And if it was fans who did this, why’d they wait so long to make this? They could’ve done it four weeks ago when Punk walked out.

3) If you go over the tweets, you’ll notice that it tells people NOT to chant Chris Benoit. It tells people to cheer for the talent that’s working their asses off to get noticed. It tells people to respect the legends. So, only hijack the crowd when the top stars outside of Daniel Bryan are out there?? That doesn’t sound like pissed off fans to me. Pissed off fans don’t care about respecting anyone. They only care about getting what they want.

4) What is the account’s end game if Monday doesn’t work? This account is supposed to be fans who want change in WWE? Even a fan would know it would take more than ONE NIGHT to create the kind of change we want to see, and again, this account was created three days ago?? If they wanted to create the kind of buzz they want to help change WWE in one day, they should have definitely started this account more around the time Punk left. The account is specifically targeting the Raw crowd in Chicago, because they know what kind of fans are in Chicago – they can’t do this with a crowd in, well, Green Bay is a good example because that crowd was awful. Or Phoenix. In fact, a good number of the past four crowds were bad – L.A. kind of disappointed, too. For fans to do this kind of thing, they’d be better off targeting something more than just ONE SPECIFIC CROWD. They’d be better off with a blog. It does say it’s bigger than Chicago, but then why aim it at the Chicago crowd alone? If this was indeed a fan or group of fans, I’d call them disorganized – why? Because to get to their very specific endgame, them doing it with only a week in advance – but the wording of the tweets themselves sound like the person behind is of a good level of intelligence, so clearly that person or persons would know that they’d need more than a week. While it does have a decent number of people following, once again, it’s only been a week, so it’s not exactly at a million followers – that’s the only thing that says “No it’s not” because it’s not super well known to wrestling fans, even though it’s making it’s way around, but you’d think WWE would want people to know about it, without pointing it out directly themselves. But again, it was given a week.

5) I don’t know why it keeps mentioning Shane. That’s the only thing that doesn’t make much sense to me. Shane isn’t relevant in the situation

That all being said, I just read an interesting dirtsheet article that says the current WM Card lists the title match as ” Randy Orton vs. Batista vs. ?” Take that for what you will, but it seems very interesting to me.

Pre-publishing edit: Between the original draft of this, I found another account called Hijack Raw. It was started two days after Punk left. https://twitter.com/HijackRAW Another interesting coincidence. This one talks like the Raw crowd one. (There are now some obvious fan run ones) It doesn’t seem to have as much of a following for one that’s been around longer, but it seems like #HijackRAW is a big deal on twitter now – one of the people I watch on Youtube mentioned it, and one of the podcasts I listened to mentioned it. The Raw crowd is now showing up on dirtsheets, including Bleacher Report, among others. Someone else even called them out as being a work, which they of course denied, but they’d have to. Why are there two very similar sounding twitter accounts run by fans? You’d almost expect them to be the same person/people.

I do want to say a few things regarding things I’m seeing between wrestling fans lately. There are fans who are getting pissed at fans chanting whatever the hell they want – and while I’m starting to get annoyed at the random chants, I’m only getting mad when they do them in matches they should not (Ones including Dolph, Bryan, Cesaro, etc.) – people have a right to chant whatever they want. You don’t have a right to tell them otherwise.

You also can’t get pissed off at them chanting C.M. Punk. Why would we not chant for someone we want them to see? Why would we be pissed off at Punk for leaving? WE SUPPORT HIM, morons. We want the same thing for the company that he does. He’s not out for himself here. He wants change in the business. We want change in the business. Of course we want him back, and we will chant accordingly. Don’t tell us to be directing our anger at Punk’s leaving at Punk – he left because of something the company did, so obviously we should be mad at the company.

All that being said, I have a message for anyone attending Raw on Monday, much like myself. Do your job. Hijack the crowd. But only do it during the correct times. When Triple H, Randy Orton, Batista, and people like that are out there. When there’s legitimate crap in the ring, hijack the show. When Daniel Bryan is out there, chant Yes. When the Shield and the Wyatts face off, give that match the respect it deserves. Cheer for Dolph. Cheer for Cesaro. Cheer for younger talent trying to prove themselves. Boo all other top stars that have had their time. Give nothing but respect to Undertaker. Personally I say boo Hogan, he deserves it. But do not be douchebags and hijack the show when there’s good talent in the ring.

I think I’ve been able to make all the points I wanted to, so that’s where I’ll leave it. We’ll see Monday how things turn out.

Alright, I was finally able to watch the rest of of NXT Arrival, so I guess I’ll be able to comment about it now. I’m not going to review it quite like a PPV, even though it’s kind of like an NXT PPV – I’m just going to comment on the matches, briefly. This won’t be a long post, at all.

The first match was Cesaro vs. Sami Zayn in a rematch from their epic 2 out of 3 falls match last year. Sadly, I haven’t seen that match, as I’ve only started watching NXT in mid-December. I’ve of course seen highlights, but I’d like to see the full match. So, I can’t say which match was better. On the other hand, this match was amazing, and definitely the match of the night. This match is what wrestling is about – it’s one of those kinds of matches I’d show to a non-wrestling fan to show them why wrestling is awesome. (When done right.) I did kind of feel like Zayn would win the match this time, but that wasn’t the case. Oh well.

I’m not going to comment on CJ Parker vs. Mojo Rawley anymore than the fact that it was awful.

The Ascension defended and retained their NXT Tag Team Championship against Too Cool. Yay, old wrestlers! Anyways, the match was short and sweet, and Too Cool actually seemed alright. Honestly it was basically a typical Ascension match from what I’ve seen – that’s not to say I don’t like them, it’s just that most of them seem like squash matches. (On a random note, the Ascension both shares a name with a favorite game of mine and uses a symbol that’s used to denote Warehouse 13 regents, so that’s cool.)

Paige then defended her NXT Women’s Championship against Emma in a really good match. These two are actually women wrestlers – they are not fricking Bella Twins. These are the kind of women that I want to see on Raw every week. (Well, Emma is there now, but more than just one.) Also, that submission Paige used to get the win was awesome. I kind of wanted Emma to win, that way Paige could actually be brought up to Raw, because it needs to happen.

Alexander Rusev interrupted a match between Xavier Woods and Tyler Breeze and attacked them. I guess I enjoyed it, all things considered. I didn’t care about Rusev in the Rumble much, and I didn’t watch his matches on NXT on the episodes I have watched because I deemed him as typical big guy and moved on.

And the main event was Bo Dallas defending the NXT Championship against Adrian Neville in a ladder match. Honestly, I was underwhelmed by this match. I guess I wasn’t expecting much, but it still wasn’t great. Outside of the one DDT spot and the Red Arrow on the ladder, it was just kind of meh. I was kind of surprised that Neville won the title, as well – I was kind of expecting Corey Graves to cost him the belt for the past couple weeks, but it didn’t happen.

Overall, the show was good, and it was a good debut for NXT on the WWE Network. That’s all.